Sazonov ES, Janoyan K, Jha R, Nelson R, Krishnamurthy V, Gao Z, Fuch M, Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Structural Health Monitoring, Stanford, 2005.
Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) sensors offer multiple advantages over conventional sensing devices. These advantages often include
smaller size and weight, reduced power consumption, integration of signal conditioning circuits directly on the chip, and reduction in cost for the sensor
and system as a whole. The concept of sensor networks is often considered as a possible way to collect data from a group of territorially distributed sensors, and as a perfect candidate for tasks of structural health monitoring. A single sensor node usually possesses a limited amount of power that has to be spent efficiently on powering of the sensors, computational tasks and wireless data transmission. In this paper we present a comparative study summarizing performance of several analog-todigital converters and MEMS accelerometers from various manufacturers. The testing was performed on the platform of Wireless Intelligent Sensor and Actuator Network (WISAN). The goal of the comparison is to establish reliable estimates on the resolution, accuracy and power consumption of various data acquisition devices and sensors utilized in an ultra-low-power application.